


A Haze of Fire

by Rubynye



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, M/M, Nonmonogamy, Pillow Talk, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 06:18:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1499849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve, Sam, and shared life experiences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Haze of Fire

**Author's Note:**

> With all thanks to Samalander.  
> Title from Sara Teasdale's "A Haze of Fire" (in postscript notes).

Steve walks out of the hotel bathroom, toweling his hair and thinking about nothing and everything: a budding maple outside the window, today's vanished trail, Sam dozing on the right side of the bed, all solid lines and softened angles draped in a bleached-white blanket. Steve stops in the doorway and just looks as Sam breathes in the warm lamplight, the easy lift and fall of his chest, the arch of mustache over his slightly parted lips; Steve keeps looking, and thinks about nothing except that he should draw Sam in blended colors, the rich siennas and umbers he'd use to shade the swells of muscle in Sam's shoulder and arm, the rise of his cheekbone and curve of his head set off by the fluffy pillow.

Sam blinks lazily, peering up from a heavy-lidded eye as that smile of his slowly spreads across his cheek, and Steve folds his arms and smiles back just a little as he feels Sam look him over top to toes. He knows the serum built him up attractively as well as usefully but it still doesn't always feel like it's really him people are looking at. He can't help remembering before the serum, the few cherished people who found beauty in his skinny frame. Mostly, Bucky. Especially Bucky, and the way he'd look at Steve from under half-mast eyelids, his eyes slivers of midnight blue.

Steve blinks at movement, and sees Sam's eyebrows pull together as he pushes himself up on his elbow, his eyes flickering to full alertness, his mouth pursed and serious. Guilt bites into Steve's chest and he hauls in a breath to apologize for whatever showed on his face, but Sam shakes his head and pats the bed beside him. "C'mon," he murmurs, the lamplight striking golden sparks in his bottomless brown eyes. "C'mon, get in."

So Steve obeys, draping the towel on a chair's back, skipping the whole sleepwear step and sliding under the blanket to face Sam, who looks back at him, steady and awake. "You never know when it's gonna hit you," he continues, laying his hand between them at a precisely calibrated distance. "The littlest things…" Sam's eyes unfocus for a moment, clear and infinite as the night sky, before returning to the here and now. "It took me forever before I could stand the smell of roses, after I got back."

Steve nods, a step behind, and lays his hand atop Sam's, which is only a half-inch smaller. "Too many funerals?"

Sam shakes his head against the pillow, a smile in his eyes. "Nah, not that. It's the local cooking, they use lots of rosewater. For the first year, a whiff of an old lady's perfume or a rosebush in bloom and I'd find myself back there, sitting across a beat-up table from Riley, watching him suck down one of those sticky-sweet desserts he loved." Sam pushes his fingers up between Steve's, who folds their hands together, holding on tight. "I always wondered how they'd taste."

He hoists a salacious eyebrow, surprising a chuckle out of Steve. "Oh," he stammers, and Sam's generous mouth curves widely. "You didn't -- ?" Two words too many, and the smile vanishes.

Sam takes a deep breath, and Steve tries not to think about how long he could spend just watching Sam breathe and move and simply live, and definitely not about what he'd like to do when he's done watching. He listens, keeping his eyes on Sam's as Sam looks back into him. "Nah," he answers Steve's stupid question. "I never, he never…. I trusted him too much, if that makes sense? He was my wingman. He was the best thing in my life." A too-familiar crease falls in between Sam's eyes, and Steve knows the painful weight of might-have-beens, their echoes pressing down his heart.

Then Sam refocuses, letting Steve see the question coming, and between one breath and the next Steve decides not to dodge. "What about you?" Sam asks, as casual and insightful as when he asked about Steve's too-soft bed. "You and Barnes?"

These hotel beds are squishy, too, this blanket indulgently fleecy over his naked skin, but Sam's bracing grip keeps him from sinking through them, night by night. "We grew up together," Steve answers slowly, hanging onto Sam's hand, looking back into his mind. "We figured everything out together, Bucky and I, including ourselves. Including girls, and fellows, and just messing around, finding out how good we could make each other feel."

Halfway to lost in his memories of Bucky's lips soft on his, Bucky's encouraging laugh in the darkness, Steve glances up to Sam's attentive face and rigidly squared shoulder as he says, "You're braver than I was. Of course."

"No, I wasn't." Steve disentangles their fingers, moving too fast for Sam's wide eyes to shift past surprise before he grips the swell of Sam's shoulder and tugs sharply. Sam grins, still startled but with the program, only a beat behind Steve's lead as he pushes his head beneath Steve's chin and slots their bodies together, fitting just right. "No, I'm not." Steve wraps his arm across Sam's shoulders, tucks his other hand over the small of his back, so damn glad all over again that he glanced twice at that easy-loping jogger with the high-held head and the sweetly curved rear, that he took a chance to tease this man into the first meeting of something that's meant more than he ever could have seen coming.

Steve hangs onto Sam, solid all down his chest and belly, and just lets himself feel glad for a moment, so sharply it aches; Sam snorts eloquent disbelief, a warm puff of air over Steve's collarbone, and long-disused muscles stretch in Steve's cheeks as he grins, his cheek pressed to the crispness of Sam's close-cropped hair and his thigh to the hard-muscled length of Sam's, his ribs wrapped securely by Sam's strong arm. For a moment there's nothing in Steve's mind but the present feel of Sam's anchoring warmth.

Then Sam rumbles, "I get it, I really do," his voice a little gravelly. "I understand why you're going after him. That's why I came. If Riley were out there… "

"Yeah." All Steve can see is Bucky now, lost and hollow-cheeked, robbed even of his own identity, alone in the same world as the survivors of the bastards who carved him down from a beautiful man into a gleaming weapon. "God, it's almost worse than when he was just dead, when I thought he was." All he can see are Bucky's eyes, so cold on the rooftop and the bridge, finally thawing with angry confusion on the helicarrier and maybe the tiniest hint of hope, Steve has to pray. "And so much better. I can save him. We can help him."

Sam nods against Steve's neck, but his shoulders under Steve's arm are rigid as steel. Steve blinks at movement and sees the maple tree tossing outside the window, its young leaves crimson under the streetlight, and a tumble of recurring thoughts turn and click together, slotting into place. "Sam," Steve says, and Sam nods again, then gets it and shifts back enough for their eyes to meet. "Sam."

"Yeah?" Sam asks, eyes narrowed, arms tightening fractionally around Steve's waist.

"I have to save Bucky," Steve starts, at the wrong end; he squeezes his eyes shut a moment, shaking his head against the marshmallow pillow, and starts over. "But, what I mean is, this, what we're doing." He waves over them, between them, and Sam's eyebrows lift. "This isn't temporary. It's not a stopgap. I want it for it, for you."

"This relationship, you mean," Sam says precisely, setting each word out, and Steve's cheeks burn, heat rushing up the back of his neck and curling over his ears.

He watches Sam smile at his blush, remembers that Sam thinks he's brave, and pushes onward. "Yeah. I want you to know, I want this for, for as long as you want it, Sam. As long as you want me. Finding Bucky's not gonna change that."

Sam's eyebrows arch up like wings, but his teeth shine in his smile. "What'll I do when the implacable assassin wants his boyfriend back, huh?" He singsongs the last four words and Steve's face burns like a July sunburn, but Sam's shoulders are easing in his hold.

 _If_ , Steve thinks, and shoves it away. "When -- when he's well enough -- we'll deal with it as it comes." That's as much of a plan as they can make now, this far out.

Sam nods once more, brief and businesslike, but his eyes shine like beacons and all Steve wants to do is follow. "This is when I'm supposed to tell you not to make promises you might not be able to keep," he says, so calmly Steve's heart falls a little. "That we should just take this day by day and see what happens."

"What are you saying?" Steve breathes, winded by sudden doubt.

Sam looks at him for a moment more, a breath more. Then he hooks his knee behind Steve's as he reaches for Steve's face with both big hands, bracketing his head securely, so much strength in his sleek push as he pulls Steve into a quick hard kiss. "What I've been saying since I met you, doofus."

"Hey," Steve parries weakly, shocked by joy, and has to cup Sam's cheek in his palm and curl his fingers behind Sam's nape, has to brush his thumb across Sam's crisp mustache and tender lip.

"Yeah?" Sam kisses him again, teeth striking sparks before they can stop grinning enough to get their lips together, as they tip over so Steve's back hits the mattress and Sam's whole welcome weight blankets his front. "Yes." A longer kiss, so sweet Steve's heart pounds against Sam's chest as he dares a stroke down the length of Sam's back; his pulse beats in his throat under Sam's thumb and rushes through his wrist pressed to Sam's hip, heat rising all over his skin as Sam shimmies up that last half inch to line them up, electric pleasure jolting through him. "Yes, Steve," Sam breathes over Steve's mouth, closing his bottomless eyes, his eyelids fine as silk. "I'm saying yes."

Sam seals it with a lavishly dirty kiss, hot and deep as he rocks down with all that strength. Steve pushes up to him, digging his fingers into the ridge of Sam's spine, hauling him in tight as they surge together into motion. Sam presses into Steve's hold, his low rumble tingling Steve's lips as Steve tastes one more 'yes'.

**Author's Note:**

> Red Maples
> 
> In the last year I have learned  
> How few men are worth my trust;  
> I have seen the friend I loved  
> Struck by death into the dust,  
> And fears I never knew before  
> Have knocked and knocked upon my door --  
> "I shall hope little and ask for less,"  
> I said, "There is no happiness."
> 
> I have grown wise at last -- but how  
> Can I hide the gleam on the willow-bough,  
> Or keep the fragrance out of the rain  
> Now that April is here again?  
> When maples stand in a haze of fire  
> What can I say to the old desire,  
> What shall I do with the joy in me  
> That is born out of agony?
> 
>  
> 
> Sara Teasdale


End file.
